New On View: Mary Thayer

To change things up a bit, we’ve replaced the painting of Abbott Thayer’s son, Gerald, with this beautiful oil of his daughter Mary. Portrait of the Artist’s Eldest Daughter now hangs near Thayer’s monumental work A Virgin, which features all three of the artist’s children and is prominently displayed over the staircase between the Freer and Sackler.

According to Lee Glazer, associate curator of American art at Freer|Sackler, “Thayer’s three children endured countless sessions posing for their father in the years following their mother’s untimely death in 1891. Thayer declared his children to be his ‘passion of passions.’ He explained to Freer, ‘I paint, during this period of my life, almost nothing except my children, yet must sell them. Perhaps these very paintings goad me to paint another and a better each time.'”

Freer paid ten thousand dollars for A Virgin, a hefty sum in 1893. Shortly after shipping A Virgin to Freer’s house in Detroit, Thayer sent his patron this complementary portrait of Mary as “a bonus,” as he said, “to ease my conscience about the $10,000.” Mary’s portrait would go well with that of her brother Gerald, already in Freer’s collection.

Over the years Freer would acquire several more paintings of the Thayer children, including the two monumental “winged figures”: A Winged Figure and Winged Figure Seated Upon a Rock, in which the artist’s younger daughter, Gladys, appears in the guise of an angel. According to Glazer, “Thayer regarded these paintings as among his most inspired works.”